Biyernes, Hulyo 5, 2019

It’s Nice to Die in this City

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

When I was buying a hand of lakatan bananas in a
talipapa (makeshift store), I asked the spouses who manned it if the place I
was standing was part of the city of Taguig where the former lady mayor is the
wife of my friend then senator and now House Speakership’s wannabe Alan
Peter Cayetano.

“Barangay Southside po ito sir. Pinagaagawan ito ng
Makati City and Taguig,” the husband, a
septuagenarian, told me while he wrapped the almost P100 bananas' hand (P70 a
kilo) I bought.

I told them that in my province Pangasinan many
mayors there give P3000 to P5000 to the bereaved family of the deceased.

“Magkano ang bigayan sa patay dito sa Makati at
Taguig?” I confidently asked them since I knew the
nuances of how local chief executives forked out sums to lighten up the grief
of their helpless constituents.

The wife said Taguig only gives coffin while Makati
City provides the family a coffin, P4,000, canvas, and expenses for coffee,
biscuits, and others for the entirety of the wake.

If Taguig
City has more or less P10 billion annual appropriation budget (2017 AAB was
more than P8 billion) this year, Makati City collected P15.8 billion revenues
last year that could be part of its reenacted budget, thanks to the
procrastination of her opposition dads, this year.

Sus,
these mammoth budgets have shamed the P1.10 billion and almost P1 billion AABs
of the cities of Dagupan and Urdaneta in my province Pangasinan!

That P15.8 billion of Makati is a lot of monies baby to
ingratiate with people like the two talipapa sellers.

The rule of the thumb: If a local government unit
collects more, then it has much to offer to its constituents.

More money means more honey.
Asked the Binays of Makati why they kept winning polls as based on the above
aphorism.

Except probably to a lady mayor in Pangasinan who
just lost the recent election, she did not need a huge annual appropriation
budget just like in Makati City and Taguig to extend help to the needy.

She depended on the payolas given to her by a
syndicate.

The first class town has P250 million AAB this year.

Here was my conversation with her when she was still
an incumbent mayor.